Random Sample of Submissions Received on the Eighth Amendment

The Citizens’ Assembly has received in excess of 13,500 submissions from the public in relation to the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. It is planned to publish all submissions on the Assembly website, and that process is ongoing but as this is proving to be a very time consuming exercise the Secretariat continues to consider ways to make a sample of the submissions available to the Assembly members as soon as possible.

It was proposed therefore to present the members with a random sample of 300 of the total 13,500. The methodology to be applied to select this sample was developed with the assistance of the Central Statistics Office and is as follows:

Each individual submission will be given a unique alpha numeric identifier. This will allow each record to be individually identified and retrieved once the random selection has taken place.

No categorisation or filtering will take place in advance

A formula will be applied using a random number generator in and a sample of 300 submissions will be selected.

It is noted that this sample may include some level of duplication, due to the large number of campaign or repeat submissions received. However in order to be as transparent as possible the sample, once selected, will not be altered in any way.

The 300 randomly selected submissions will then be compiled into a single document, grouped according to how they were received (all electronic submissions together, all postal submissions together), and circulated to all members of the Assembly for discussion at the February meeting.

Please use the link below to access the 300 randomly selected submissions which formed the basis of a discussion on submissions at the Assembly's third meeting on 4-5 February -